Lichtenstein's Indian

Territory Linking two bodies oj painting based on Native-American subjects and moti/s,

and supplementing them with historical objects, a traveling exhibition explores a little-Imown

aspect oj Roy Lichlenstein~ career.

BY RICHARD KALINA

T here are few facets of Roy Lichtenstein's Pop art production that have not been extensively exhibited and thoroughly explored

critically. One important body of work from his middle Pop period, however, has thus fa r had little exposure. Between 1979 and 1981, Lichtenstein produced It group of paintings, drawings and prints, plus a sculpture and It large tapestry, based on American Indian motifs. These works dovetail stylistically with the larger body of Surrealist· inspired work executed in 1977-79. The American Indian series, while a relatively small part of Lichtenstein's Pop output, is distinguished by its clear and dired relation to the anist's pre-Pop oeuvre, l Lichtenstein was not given to mulling o\'cr the past. Once he'd hit upon his Pop style, he paid little attention to his early work and, when questioned about h, tended to be vague. But scholarship, panicularly on major artists, pushes on. I n recent years critical and, one would imagine, commercial interest , combined with the forceful ad\ucacy of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, has made that previously neglected work increasingly visible.

The first ten or so years of Lichtenstein's professional life could be characterized as a young artist's search for style and subject maUer. The work that he produced in Lhe '50s, although indebted to the art of others, does speak with a \'oice of its own. Lichtenstein's gestural Abstract Expressionism of the lale '50s is punchy and bold, while the lesser·known and more reticent School of Paris Cubism of the earlier years of the decade is formally well·wrought, and possesses consider· able charm. The latter also carries with it the conceptual seeds of his Pop work, particularly in its use of the reproduced image as subject mailer. A recurring theme from that earl)' period is the American Indian. Gail Stavitsky and '{\oiig Johnson, curators at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, worked closely with the Roy Lichtenstein f'oundation to present a small, lively show titled "Roy Lichtenstein: American Indian Encounters." The exhibition features paintings, drawings, mixed· medium pieces, prints and wooden sculptures from

Art in America

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The Last or the Burralo II, ca. J95Z, 011 on wnr.lQ, SO bll .'lltcllu. Prlr flte m/l«tlotl .

the '50si the Pop American Indian WOrki printed source material from I,\chtenstein's library; plus a sampling of historical objects from the museum's own impressh'e American Indian collection.

T he Indian has long occupit-d an important yet equr.'OCai place in Ihls Ilation's j:l1)')'Chc. A member of a nOIl· ~~uropean , nonindustrialized and

on.cn dcmcinated culture, he WlI.., seen as victim and victimizer, lhe noble savage a.nd the degraded one, the tragic figure and the buffoon. Unlike some other colonized indigenous groUI)S-lhe Australian Aboriginal, for exampJ - American Indians (or representations of them) have remained highly visible in their nalr.'e land. We see the Indian in place, product and organWiUon ~ in a v.uiety of popular entertainment ronTIS:. and also In the child's .... ,orld of oowbol'l! and Indians, summer camps and wood lore. In the 19th and early 20th cenluries, the Indian figured prominently in the academic history paintings and genre sculJltures that shoY.lld up so often in popular book.<; and reproductions.

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Lichtenstein, who was born in New York and lived on the Upper West Side (where he orten visited the Museum of Natural Historywith its American Indian dioramas and artifacts), studied, laught and painted in Ohio in the early '50s. Although he traveled back to New York on occasion, he felt himself to be out of the artistic mainstream. Local Midwest· ern museums notwithstanding, much of the art that he encountered in those years was in the form of photograllhic reproductions. Rather than seeing this distancing from actual artworks as a disadvantage, he found himself increas· Ingly Interested in the mutabl e, sec· ond-hand quali ty of rellroduced Images. And Lichtenstein's ironic sense was in place early, which no doubt accounL, for his attraction to histrionic paintings like John Vanderlyn's The Murder oj Jmle McOrta (1803·04) , dCllicting the tomahawking of a Revolutionary War-era woman by two Indians. lichtenstein's The Dealh oj Ja"e McCrea (1951) sim· pllfles and abstracts VanderJyn's compo· sition, ftauening and schemallzing the fi gures and rendering the fonns with a childlike awkwardness. The picture's ostensibl e naivete is undercut by its sophisticated use of co lor, ill which earthy browns, beiges and grcens are enlivened by strategically placed sectors of orange, red, yellow and blue.

Completed in the same year were the painting The End of Ihe 1Yail and an acoomlWl)ing drawing. Both y.~re based on a bronze of the same title by James Earle Fraser. The popular and rather corny sculpture, first eXe(uted in 1894 and recast many limes O\'cr the years, depiCts an Indian hunched O\'er on his horse, which looks every bit a., wretched as its rider. The warrior's spear is low­ered and every part of him expresses defeat. Lichtenstein's version Is funnier and scrappier. His horse (an echo or the

horse in Picasso's Guernica) seems to snarl, and the rider has consider­ably more gumption. These works emil loy a palette similar to nle Deaih oj Jails McCrea , and the sh.'l'Jlton.11 contrasts gi\'e the work the sense of drama (as opposed to melodrama) that lhe sculpture sorely lacks.

Probably lhe most formally interesting of this grOUl1 or Imintings is The U lst oj Ihe Buffa/o /I (1052). The second vcrslon of a tukcorr on Alben Bierstadt's ca. 1888 Iminting of the same name, Lichtenstein's work turns an expansi\,e horizonta l landscape comllos ltion with flgu res into a compressed and Interlocked vertical picture, held in place by the stylized brown and green circle of the buffalo's body, the red rectangle of the Indian hunter, and the \'ertical white spear that pierces the animal's back. As Lichtenstein got deeper into this body of work, his innovali\'e abilities seemed to increase. An untilled masklike work, ca. 1055, made of painted splintered plywood, wood battens and canvas, breaks the rectan~ .. ular boundaries of traditional painti ng, and A lI'inlleoogo (ca. 1056) shows us the boldly stroked and

aggressively patterned head of a Plains Indian seen in profile. These are me works that seem most to foretell the later American Indian paintings, and a comparison of the two earlier pieces with the rrontaJ, forcefully patterned, and angular Head with Braids (1979) I'e\-eals considerable similarities.

Pai nting subjects rrom American history enabled Lichtenstein to engage with impor­tant and dlslinctly American Lhemes (there was much talk In the '50s of "the Great Ameri­can NO\'el" and similar projects). Given the sources he chose, however, he hart:lly seems to ha\'e intended taking the matter too seri­ously, and his irony enabled him to a\'Oid the trap or Regionalism-an especially dangerous association for a forward-thinking artist living in the Midwest. In any case, Lichtenstein's most Important early influences were Mir6, Klce and, abo\'e all, Picasso. Those three art­Ists (although Picasso much less often) mixed whimsy and humor with inno\'atlon and for­mal flair, Their ability to combine serious­Iless of purpose with lightness of touch clearly appealed to Lichtenstein, for this .... 'as a goal he pursued throughout his career,

T he Am eri can Indian series fr om the late '70s can be seen as part of Lichten­

stein's longstanding project of appropriati ng prior ar(..-Or more to the point., its ramlliar image-and turning it into something that bore his own stylistic stamp. That he could so easily do this reflected the prior dilulion of his subject matter by repeated relJroduction. The early Pop appropriations (the "Non-objeclh-e" paintings, for exam ple) are compositionally straightforward. Ncm-objective I and /I (both 1064) look like Mondrians in their color and composilion. The main difference lies in the substitution of benday-dot passages for solid color areas. In the later '70s, possibly prompt-

II fad 1rllh Braids, 1918, 011 and AlaI/no on rom'lU, 50 bl/.O /"chu. Prloot~ co/J~dlo".

~, It. \\lnnfbago, co. 19S6, 011611 COllr.m, ,. bll11 inC"~I/. PrlrlJt~ colkct16".

ed by the slJatial dislocations so common in Surrealism, his model at the time, Lichtenstein took a new compositional approach, pulling his subject matter apart and reconstituting it in a jangly, collage­like way. This is seen to excellent effect in the large-scale paintings Ha::zmalazz (1978) and Gofor Baroque (1970). llis IJatterned In-fills were no longer simply dots, but could also be parallel diagonal lines, or an exaggerated faux wood grain. llis palette expanded as well. In addition to the usual primaries plus black and white and the occa· slonal grass green, Lichtenstein added pastel tones and sometimes meta1l1c colors. The American Indian series regularly employs a range or s ..... eetly annoying buttercull yellows, seafoam greens and grayed· out pale blues, often juxtaposed with more fully saLUrated tones or the same hue. This color IJlacement Is quite capable or setting your teeth on edge. In Ammnd Composilio1l /I (1979), for example, the

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American Indian motifs appealed to Lichtenstein not only for their mix of popular and userious" art, but also for their strongly graphic nature.

U. ,/,kd, ca. 1955, ttum .... , nod, '(:ITtt', cUId ",Lrtt/ med/"m. , Ui'! bJf .u~ /,.tlln . PrlNlt~ ",'kelloll.

dominant color is thai Ingratiating light yellow, but scattered through the painting are small passages of bright golden cadmium. It hurts to see U,em together. I am certain that Lichlenstei n, with his sly sense of disruption, was aware of lhis chromatic discordance and enjoyed play­ing with it.

The collage sensibility refl ected in these works is evident not just in their composition, but in the artist's 31lproach to their subject malter. If it saicl "'ndian" to Lichtenstein, it was usable. MOIUS were pulled out of context, simplified, stylized and abstracted. Materials drawn from widely separated tribal groupings (C\'CII from different conlinents) and from different physical sources were mixed in single paintings and knit together by Lichtenstein's considerable formal skills, While it might seem less than re\'erem to throw together images from Sout h· western I)()Uery and Permian textiles, along with bear paws, smol:e from a camllfire or smoke signals, lightning bolts and arrow forms, as he does in II/dian. COml)Osit ioll (1 970), this sort of cheeky altitude lies at the heart of Lichtenstein's enterprise,

It would be reasonable to assume that American Indian motifs 3P1)Caled to Lichtenstein not just for their mix of popular culture and ~serious art" but also for their formal interest. Their strongly graphic nature made a good fit with his own bold style. That many of those forms were drawn from ornamentation inscribed on t.h ree-dimen.~ lonal objects made it easier to treat them as mallcable entities not subject 10 the strictu res of conventional painting organization. Lichtenstein was thus able to extract elements from thei r original context and effectivcly position them in the cum]Jlex compositions he was con· strucLing at the lime, lie seemed to erijoy the challenge of ~ Iough" compositions-pulling something orr that didn't want to sit easily. CompQSifwn with 11,;0 Figll res (1970) is a good example of Ihat. The

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painting uses forms from the Acoma and Zuni Pueblos of New Mexico. These forms were reproduced in a [)m'er book tha~ Lichtenstein had in his library. The book itself is included in the exhibition, as is a Zuni pot , ca. 1880, ..... ith the "rain bird~ motif that he adapted fo r the remale figure on the left. The male figure on the right- a jagged-edged wood· grained reclangle topped with feathers-visually tussles with the white, curving female figure, while the blocky diagonal elements Ihal occupy much of Ihe rest of the painting steadrastIy resist pictorial integration. The painting teeters on the edge of instability and garish­ness (as do many in this series) but somehow stays intact. It is all the more interesting for the disequilibrium.

I t is tempting to speculate on why Lichtenstein spent as liltle time as he did on a series that promised so much, both rormally and

iconographically, Lichtenstein was a restlessly innowath'e and produc· th'e artist. lie was also a hands-on painter, and of course there was only so much he could take on at one time. lie might simply have tired of the subject, but it is lil:ely that something he cunsidered more compelling engaged his interest. A major portion of Lichtenstein's painting rrom the early to the mid·'80s deals wilh cxllresslonism in its many \'ariants. While this might seem to be yet another art-historical mode to be translated into Lichtenstein's distinctive Pop dialect, his expressionist paintings took quite a different stylistic tum. In these work.Oi, cool and carefully delineated POll passages were frequently interspersed with act'Ual brushstrokes-)oose, fl uid, and quick.' Did the American Indian series, with Its look back at his own early work, allow him t.o C{lntinuc the relJ"OSjlCCtive j)ffi(:ess and integrate his dis· carded Abstract Expressionism or the late '50s into a current, project? There Is something else we might consider- the strange hold that expressionism, reimigoraloo by Ihe immensely successful Neo-E.xpres­sionist mo\'ement, had on American painters, both young and Old, in the IOSOs. Everyone seemed to feellhe pressure, and many who might ha\"e known better- Frank Stella, Mel Bochner and Roy Lichtellslein among them-succumbed, at least for a while.~

The Montclair Museum show iS:I fascinating look not at what might have been, but what was for a while, It puts together work from tv.·o separate bul linked periods in a major artist's career, and bolsters that presentation with waluable source material and significant related ObjecLS. This first-rate effort shows how a small, general purpose museum with real depth in one field (in this case Nali\"e American art) can mo\'e beyond its curatorial comfort lOne and gh'c us some­thing that is focused and scholarly, yet fascinating for a \\ider audi­ence. 0

t. It 15 likely lhil Uchlenstein II'U prompttd w reirn'f:!l(ipte his rarller wont by spend­\flIlirne with Ernst BlI5Chr, .mo _ ('Ondu~lh" researdl on Lk:hteMtein'l early liM foc hI! dls5trlation. 2. The aidespread pretence 01' AborigInal desl&n JIlO(lfs in AUW1IIIa, wn on e'I'eI)UUIII from cocktal1 napktM w the bodies of ~tas Jets, Is I reilln.'ely recent phenomeoon. The modet fOI thew motif!!, the ICryl ie paIntings ofl lledesei1 dot palnll"lS, did flO( emt before the t970s. 3, The96 reaI·llme, one·shot brushsuokes are problellllltielor me: I ha\~ dlttlculiles \\ilh the st"*n' edges. their M1rtaees and their drall,n shapes, Illld t lind lhe paintings from Ihls period (the 1'er)'1arse t985 pkturu, MOIIlllaill liUage and Fiprn iI. II LaIldM:v./W, for cumple) to be !lilliif' ofLichlensteln'l1M'lt chaotic lnd unretOl\~ II-orb. • • UchteMltln "" In enpged and SlI,yartbL Is il purelycoincldcnWthat the Amen­eal1 Indian Ilene. had mIlCh In common "ilh the Pauem and Decorallon lIIO\"t'rnenl of 1M mid· lu tate '7Os, while his 1'q)l't'S'Ilonbt work mimred the N_t:xprmkmbm that followed in tile eatly '8Os!

"ROIl Licllintsll"ill: Amniroll IlIdilln I,'JIl'OII~ I~· opnrtd III 1M MfJlllciai r IN.J./ ..Irt J/II.R'IoIIII/Oct 16, l()()5.JaH. ~ !OO6/. 1t utwTmlll1l on ~'IftIlal ~ M/U#'VIII I(FiM .~n.., SaIt/Q If If to. .,t.Apr. n. ZfXJ61, aNilnJm. /(j 1M ThalMa Art MMlftlIII fdl llfll3-&pt f, !006/, 1M I'orrislt Art JillSf'lflll, SotIlAal'lplml, MY. /&pt. t.H}tc. 31, toIM/, alld tAt EildjQrJ MIIVII"" I ltdw,lIlIpoiu /Ja", 19-Apr. 18, !007/.